I’m going to be super lame, and open this review with a quote from another author. To quote Neil Gaiman, “The real problem with stories – if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”
This is what is termed a “mosaic novel,” a series of vignettes that form a complete story when taken all together. It starts shortly before World War I, with two little Jewish girls: Chana from the Russian Empire, Sophia from the German Empire. Despite living hundreds of miles apart, they manage - somehow, no explanation is ever even hinted at - to wander into the same forest clearing. They very quickly become best friends, in the way that only small children can, and vow to try to find their way back to the clearing every year.
Sophia and Chana never meet again. But their families do, again and again over the generations, never realizing the history they share. And that’s where we get our vignettes: snapshots of the lives of the descendants of Sophia and Chana, frequently featuring appearances (sometimes cameos, sometimes substantial ones) where their descendants touch each other's lives. These vignettes are shaped by events like two world wars, the labor movement, the Holocaust, the AIDS epidemic, and (when the stories start reaching into the future) climate change and environmental collapse.
These stories tend to vary between bittersweet and intensely sad. End of life (whether from the perspective of the person dying, or their loved ones left behind) is a frequent theme - hence the Gaiman quote above. The traditional Jewish blessing said when someone dies - zikhrono livrakha, “may their memory be a blessing” - is a common theme.
Another deep theme in this is the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, “repairing the world.” Tikkun olam has many connotations, the most common of which today is a call to actions of social justice. But it has a more mystical connotation as well: the notion that the divine light of God was shattered during Creation, and it’s up to people to bring these separated sparks of goodness together to restore the world to Paradise. A different spin on the same idea: there are only so many souls in creation, and loving connections are two parts of the same soul finding each other. This is both subtext woven throughout and something explicitly discussed, as well as referenced in the title (when some descendants of both Sophia and Chana are talking about tikkun olam at a Passover seder, and one of them jokes, “what, is everyone at this table Soul Number 2065 or something?”).
An excellent, and powerful, journey. Have tissues, a fuzzy blanket, a cup of cocoa, and a puppy on standby. There’ll be some ugly crying.